Creativity World Forum & National Creativity Network

[Angelique]

I think it was Dave Troy who mentioned a video about John Cleese and
creativity during one of the Create Baltimore sessions. That
immediately perked up my ears: one because I thought I knew the video
he was talking about (see here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGt3-fxOvug)
and secondly because I knew something of the group that had put on
that conference.

Cleese's talk was at the 2008 Creativity World Forum in Flanders. The
Creativity World Forum is the annual meeting of 14 international
Districts of Creativity. The only US member of this network is
Oklahoma City--but Maryland was the original US site and the second
Forum (2005) was held in Bethesda. I discovered this while doing
research on behalf of Creative Oklahoma, the host organization for the
2010 Forum and always thought it was curious that Maryland had an
opportunity to be part of this movement and it somehow fizzled. (I
never learned the reasons behind this, but if anyone on the list is
connected into the biotech industries in the state, I can post names
of people and businesses who were part of the movement previously.
While the 2010 Forum had a pretty wide range of topics of
conversation, the 2005--titled Creative Global Connections in
Bioscience--seemed to have a much narrower focus).

Also noteworthy is that, during the 2010 Forum, Creative Oklahoma
announced the launch of the National Creativity Network. As of
November 2010, the states of Wisconsin, New Jersey, Massachusetts,
North Carolina, Colorado, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York were
participating in the initiative. I would love to see our state
identifying creativity as a priority in this way and promoting
creativity in the very broad way we explored it during CreateBaltimore
(ie, creativity!=arts only).

More info
* Creative Oklahoma: http://stateofcreativity.com/
* 2010 Creativity World Forum: http://stateofcreativity.com/events/cwf/
* Districts of Creativity Network: http://www.districtsofcreativity.org/
* National Creativity Network: http://nationalcreativitynetwork.org/
(not much here right now)
* Press release on the NCC launch: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20101115006736/en



Cheers / Angelique (@miscellaneaarts)